Book: A Noble Life

D >> Dinah Maria Mulock Craik >> A Noble Life




After that day he refused all holiday excursions in which Lord
Cairnforth could not accompany him. It was only by great persuasion
that he agreed to go for a week to Edinburg, to revisit his old haunts
there, to look on the ugly fields where he had sown his wild oats, and
prove to even respectable and incredulous Uncle Alick that there was no
fear of their ever sprouting up again. Also, Lord Cairnforth took the
opportunity to introduce his cousin into his own set of Edinburg
friends, to familiarize the young man with the society in which he must
shortly take his place, and to hear from them, what he so warmly
believed himself, that Cardross was fitted to be heir to any property in
all Scotland.

"What a pity," some added, "that he could not be heir to the earldom
also!" "No," said others, "better that 'the wee earl' (as old-fashioned
folk still sometimes called him) should be the last Earl of Cairnforth."

With the exception of those two visits, during a whole twelvemonth the
earl and his adopted son were scarcely parted for a single day. Years
afterward, Cardross loved to relate, first to his mother, and then to
his children, sometimes with laughter, and again with scarcely repressed
tears, may an anecdote of the life they two led together at St. Andrew's
--a real student life, yet filled at times with the gayest amusements.
For the earl loved gayety--actual mirth; sometimes he and Cardross
were as full of jests and pranks as two children, and at other times
they held long conversations upon all manner of grave and earnest
topics, like equal friends. It was the sort of companionship, free and
tender, cheerful and bright, yet with all the influence of the elder
over the younger, which, occurring to a young man of Cardross's age and
temperament, usually determines his character for life.

Thus, day by day, Helen's son developed and matured, becoming more and
more a thorough Cardross, sound to the core, and yet polished outside in
a manner which had not been the lot of any of the earlier generation,
save the minister. Also, he had a certain winning way with him--a
power of suiting himself to every body, and pleasing every body--
which even his mother, who only pleased those she loved or those that
loved her, had never possessed.

"It's his father's way he has, ye ken," Malcolm would say--Malcolm,
who, after a season of passing jealousy, had for years succumbed wholly
to his admiration of "Miss Helen's bairn." "But it's the only bit o'
the Bruces that the lad's gotten in him, thank the Lord!"

Though the earl did not say openly "thank the Lord," still he, too,
recognized with a solemn joy that the qualities he and Helen dreaded had
either not been inherited by Captain Bruce's son, or else timely care
had rooted them out. And as he gradually relaxed his watch over the
young man, and left him more and more to his own guidance, Lord
Cairnforth, sitting alone in his house at St. Andrew's--almost as
much alone as he used to sit in the Castle library--would think, with
a strange consolation, that this year's heavy sacrifice had not been in
vain.

Once Cardross, coming in from a long golfing match, broke upon one of
these meditative fits, and was a little surprised to find that the earl
did not rouse himself out of it quite so readily as was his wont; also
that the endless college stories, which he always liked so much to
listen to, fell rather blank, and did not meet Lord Cairnforth's hearty
laugh, as gay as that of a young fellow could share and sympathize in
them all.

"You are not well to-day," suddenly said the lad. "What have you been
doing?"

"My usual work--nothing."

"But you have been thinking. What about?" cried Cardross, with the
affectionate persistency of one who knew himself a favorite, and looking
up in the earl's face with his bright, fond eyes--Helen's very eyes.

"I was thinking of your mother, my boy. You know it is a whole year
since I have seen your mother."

"So she said in her last letter, and wondered when you intended coming
home, because she misses you more and more every day."

"You, she means, Carr."

"No, yourself. I know my mother wishes you would come home."

"Does she? And so do I. But I should have to leave you alone, my boy;
for if once I make the effort, and return to Cairnforth, I know I shall
never quit it more."

He spoke earnestly--more so than the occasion seemed to need, and
there was a weary look in his eyes which struck his companion.

"Are you afraid to leave me alone, Lord Cairnforth?" asked Cardross,
sadly.

"No." And again, as if he had not answered strongly enough, he
repeated, "My dear boy, no!"

"Thank you. You never said it, but I knew. You came here for my sake,
to take charge of me. You made me happy--you never blamed me--you
neither watched me or domineered over me--still, I knew. Oh, how
good you have been!"

Lord Cairnforth did not speak for some time, and then he said, gravely,

"However things were at first, you must feel, my boy, that I trust you
now entirely, and that you and I are thorough friends--equal
friends."

"Not equal. On, never in my whole life shall I be half so good as you!
But I'll try hard to be as good as I can. And I shall be always beside
you. Remember your promise."

This was, that after he came of age, and ended his university career,
instead of taking "the grand tour," like most young heirs of the period,
Cardross should settle down at home, in the character of of Lord
Cairnforth's private secretary--always at hand, and ready in every
possible way to lighten the burden of business which, even as a young
man, the earl had found heavy enough, and as an old man he would be
unable to bear.

"I shall never be clever, I know that," pleaded the lad, who was
learning a touching humility, "but I may be useful; and oh! if you would
but use me, in any thing or every thing, I'd work day and night for you
--I would indeed!"

"I know you would, my son" (earl sometimes called him "my son" when they
were by themselves), "and so you shall."

That evening Lord Cairnforth dictated to Helen, by her boy's hand, one
of his rare letters, telling her that he and Cardross would return home
in time for the latter's birthday, which would be in a month from now,
and which he wished kept with all the honors customary to the coming of
age of an heir of Cairnforth.

"Heir of Cairnforth!" The lad started, and stopped writing.

"It must be so, my son; I wish it. After your mother, you are my heir,
and I shall honor you as such; afterward you will return here alone, and
stay till the session is over; then come back, and live with me at the
Castle, and fit yourself in every way to become--what I can now wholly
trust you to be--the future master of Cairnforth."

And so, as soon as the earl's letter reached the peninsula, the
rejoicings began. The tenantry knew well enough who the earl had fixed
upon to come after him, but his was his first public acknowledgment of
the fact. Helen's position, as heiress presumptive, was regarded as
merely nominal; it was her son, the fine young fellow whom every body
knew from his babyhood, toward whom the loyalty of the little community
blazed up in a height of feudal devotion that was touching to see. The
warm Scotch heart--all the warmer, perhaps, for a certain narrowness
and clannishness, which in its pride would probably, nay, certainly,
have shut itself up against a stranger or an inferior--opened freely
to "Miss Helen's" son and the minister's grandson, a young man known to
all and approved of by all.

So the festivity was planned to be just the earl's coming of age over
again, with the difference between June and December, which removed the
feasting-place from the lawn to the great kitchen of the Castle, and
caused bonfires on the hill-tops to be a very doubtful mode of
jubilation. The old folk--young then--who remembered the bright
summer festival of twenty-four years ago told many a tale of that day,
and how the "puir wee earl" came forward in his little chair and made
his brief speech, every word and every promise of which his after life
had so faithfully fulfilled.

"The heir's a wise-like lad, and a braw lad," said the old folks of the
clachan, patronizingly. "He's no that ill the noo, and he'll aiblins
grow the better, ye ken; but naibody that comes after will be like him.
We'll ne'er see anither Earl o' Cairnforth."

The same words which Mr. Menteith and the rest had said when the earl
was born, but with what a different meaning!

Lord Cairnforth came back among his own people amid a transport of
welcome. Though he had been long away, Mrs. Bruce and other assistants
had carried out his plans and orders so successfully that the estate had
not suffered for his absence. In the whole extent of it was now little
or no poverty; none like that which, in his youth, had startled Lord
Cairnforth into activity upon hearing the story of the old shepherd of
Loch Mhor. There was plenty of work, and hands to do it, along the
shores of both lochs; new farms had sprung up, and new roads been made;
churches and schools were built as occasion required; and though the
sheep had been driven a little higher up the mountains, and the deer and
grouse fled farther back into the inland moors, still Cairnforth village
was a lovely spot, inhabited by a contented community. Civilization
could bring to it no evils that were not counteracted by two strong
influences--(stronger than any one can conceive who does not
understand the peculiarities almost feudal in their simplicity, of
country parish life in Scotland)--a minister like Mr. Cardross, and a
resident proprietor like the Earl of Cairnforth.

The earl arrived a few days before the festival day, and spent the time
in going over his whole property from one end to the other. He took
Mrs. Bruce with him. "I can't want you for a day now, Helen," said he,
and made her sit beside him in his carriage, which, by dint of various
modern appliances, he could now travel in far easier than he used to do,
or else asked her to drive him in the old familiar pony-chaise along the
old familiar hill-side roads, whence you look down on ether loch--
sometimes on both--lying like a sheet of silver below.

Man a drive they took every day, the weather being still and clam, as it
often is at Cairnforth, by fits and snatches, all winter through.

"I think there never was such a place as this place," the earl would
often say, when he stopped at particular points of view, and gazed his
fill on every well-known outline of the hills and curve of the lochs,
generally ending with a smiling look on the face beside him, equally
familiar, which had watched all these things with him for more than
thirty years. "Helen, I have had a happy life, or it seems so, looking
back upon it. Remember, I said this, and let no one ever say the
contrary."

And in all the houses they visited--farm, cottage, or bothie--
every body noticed how exceedingly happy the earl looked, how cheerfully
he spoke, and how full of interest he was in every thing around him.

"His lordship may live to be an auld man yet," said some one to Malcolm,
and Malcolm indignantly repudiated the possibility of any thing else.

The minister was left a little lonely during this week of Lord
Cairnforth's coming home, but he did not seem to feel it. He felt
nothing very much now except pleasure in the sunshine and the fire, in
looking at the outside of his books, now rarely opened, and in watching
the bright faces around him. He was made to understand what a grand
festival was to be held at Cairnforth, and the earl took especial pains
to arrange that the feeble octogenarian should be brought to the Castle
without fatigue, and enabled to appear both at the tenants' feast in the
kitchen, and the more formal banquet of friends and neighbors in the
hall--the grand old dining-room--which was arranged exactly as it
had been on the earl's coming of age.

However, there was a difference. Then the board was almost empty, now
it was quite full. With a carefulness that at the time Helen almost
wondered at, the earl collected about him that day the most brilliant
gathering he could invite from all the country round--people of
family, rank, and wealth--above all, people of worth; who, either by
inherited position, or that high character which is the best possession
of all, could confer honor by their presence, and who, since "a man is
known by his friends," would be suitable and creditable friends to a
young man just entering the world.

And before all these, with Helen sitting as mistress at the foot of the
table, and Helen's father at his right hand, the Earl of Cairnforth
introduced, in a few simple words, his chosen heir.

"Deliberately chosen," he added; "not merely as being my cousin and my
nearest of kin, but because he is his mother's son, and Mr. Cardross's
grandson, and worthy of them both--also because, for his own sake, I
respect him, and I love him. I give you the health of Alexander
Cardross Bruce-Montgomerie."

And then they all wished the young man joy, and the dining-hall of
Cairnforth Castle rang with hearty cheers for Mr. Bruce-Montgomerie.

No more speeches were made, for it was noticed that Lord Cairnforth
looked excessively wearied; but he kept his place to the last. Of the
many brilliant circles that he had entertained at his hospitable board,
none were ever more brilliant than this; none gayer, with the genial,
wholesome gayety which the earl, of whom it might truly be said,

"A merrier man, never spent an hour's talk withal,"

knew so well how to scatter around him. By what magic he did this, no
one ever quite found out; but it was done, and especially so on this
night of all nights, when, after his long absence, he came back to his
own ancestral home, and appeared again among his own neighbors and
friends. They long remembered it--and him.

At length the last carriage rolled away, and shortly afterward the wind
began suddenly to rise and howl wildly round the Castle. There came on
one of those wild winter-storms, common enough in these regions--
brief, but fierce while they last.

"You can not go home," said the earl to Mrs. Bruce, who remained with
him, the minister having departed with his son Duncan early in the
evening. "Stay here till to-morrow. Cardross, persuade your mother.
You never yet spent a night under my roof. Helen, will you do it his
once? I shall never ask you again."

There was an earnest entreaty in his manner which Helen could not
resist; and hardly knowing why she did it, she consented. Her son went
off to his bed, fairly worn out with pleasurable excitement, and she
staid with Lord Cairnforth, as he seemed to wish, for another half hour.
They sat by the library fire, listening to the rain beating and the wind
howling--not continuously, but coming and going in frantic blasts,
which seemed like the voices of living creatures borne on its wings.

"Do you mind, Helen, it was just such a night as this when Mr. Menteith
died, before I went to Edinburg? The sort of wind that, they say, is
always sent to call away souls. I know not why it is, or why there
should be any connection between things material and immaterial,
comprehensible and wholly incomprehensible, but I often sit here and
fancy I should like my soul to be called away in just such a tempest as
this--to be set free,

"'And on the wings of mighty winds
Go flying all abroad,'

"As the psalm has it. It would be glorious--glorious! Suddenly to
find one's self strong, active--cumbered with no burden of a body--
to be all spirit, and spirit only."

As the earl spoke, his whole face, withered and worn as it was, lighted
up and glowed, Helen thought, almost like what one could imagine a
disembodied soul.

She answered nothing, for she could find nothing to say. Her quiet,
simple faith was almost frightened at the passionate intensity of his,
and the nearness with which he seemed to realize the unseen world.

"I wonder," he said again--"I sometimes sit for hours wondering--
what the other life is like--the life of which we know nothing, yet
which may be so near to us all. I often find myself planning about it
in a wild, vague way, what I am to do in it--what God will permit me
to do--and to be. Surely something more than He ever permitted here."

"I believe that," said Helen. And after her habit of bringing all
things to the one test and the one teaching, she reminded him of the
parable of the talents: "I think," she added, "that you will be one of
those whom, in requital for having made the most of all his gifts here,
He will make 'ruler over ten cities' at least, if he is a just God."

"He is a just God. In my worst trials I have never doubted that,"
replied Lord Cairnforth, solemnly. And then he repeated those words of
St. Paul, to which many an agonized doubter has clung, as being the last
refuge of sorrow--the only key to mysteries which sometime shake the
firmest faith--"'For now we see through a glass darkly, but then
face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I
am known.'"

When Helen rose to retire, which was not till midnight--for the earl
seemed unwilling to let her go, saying it was so long since they had had
a quiet talk together--he asked her earnestly if she were content
about her son.

"Perfectly content. Not merely content, but happy--happier than I
once thought it possible to be in this world. And it is you who have
done it all--you who have made my boy what he is. But he will reward
you--I know he will. Henceforward he will be as much your son as
mine."

"I hope so. And now good-night, my dear."

"Good-night--God bless you."

Mrs. Bruce knelt down beside the chair, and touched with her lips the
poor, useless hands.

"Helen," said the earl as she rose, "kiss me--just once--as I
remember your doing when I was a boy--a poor, lonely, miserable boy."

She kissed him very tenderly, then went away and left him sitting there
in his little chair, opposite the fire, alone in the large, splendid,
empty room.


* * * * *


Helen Bruce could not sleep that night. Either the day's excitement had
been too much for her, or she was disturbed by the wild winds that went
shrieking round the Castle, reminding her over and over again of what
the earl had just said concerning them. There came into her mind an
uneasy feeling about her father, whom for so many years she had never
left a night alone; but it was useless regretting this now. At last,
toward morning, the storm gradually lulled. She rose, and looked out of
her window on the loch, which glittered in moonlight like a sea of
glass. It reminded her, with an involuntary fancy, of the sea "clear as
glass, like unto crystal," spoken of in the fourth chapter of the
Apocalypse as being "before the Throne." She stood looking at it for a
minute or so, then went back to her bed and slept peacefully till
daylight.

She was dressing herself, full of quiet and happy thoughts, admiring the
rosy winter sunrise, and planning all she meant to do that day, when she
was startled by Mrs. Campbell, who came suddenly into the room with a
face as white and rigid as marble.

"He's awa'," she said, or rather whispered.

"Who's is away?" shrieked Helen, thinking at once of her father.

"Whisht!" said the old nurse, catching hold of Mrs. Bruce as she was
rushing from the room, and speaking beneath her breath; "wisht! My
lord's deid; but we'll no greet; I canna greet. He's gane awa' hame."

No, it was not the old man who was called. Mr. Cardross lived several
years after then--lived to be nearly ninety. It was the far younger
life--young, and yet how old in suffering!--which had thus
suddenly and unexpectedly come to an end.

The earl was found dead in his bed, in his customary attitude of repose,
just as Malcolm always placed him, and left him till the morning. His
eyes were wide open, so that he could not have died in his sleep. But
how, at what hour, or in what manner he had died--whether the summons
had been slow or sudden, whether he had tried to call assistance and
failed, or whether, calling no one and troubling no one, his fearless
soul had passed, and chosen to pass thus solitary unto its God, none
ever knew or ever could know, and it was all the same now.

He died as he had lived, quite alone. But it did not seem to have been
a painful death, for the expression of his features was peaceful, and
they had already settled down into that mysteriously beautiful
death-smile which is never seen on any human face but once.

Helen stood and looked down upon it--the dear familiar face, now, in
the grandeur of death, suddenly grown strange. She thought of what hey
had been talking about last night concerning the world to come. Now he
knew it all. She did not "greet;" she could not. In spite of its
outward incompleteness, it had been a noble life--an almost perfect
life; and now it was ended. He had had his desire; his poor helpless
body cumbered him no more--he was "away."


* * * * *


It was a bright winter morning the day the Earl of Cairnforth was buried
--clear hard frost, and a little snow--not much--snow never lies
long on the shores of Loch Beg. There was no stately funeral, for it
was found that he had left express orders to the contrary; but four of
his own people, Malcolm Campbell and three more, took on their shoulders
the small coffin, scarcely heavier than a child's, and bore it tenderly
from Cairnforth Castle to Cainforth kirk-yard. After it came a long,
long train of silent mourners, as is customary in Scotch funerals. Such
a procession had not been witnessed for centuries in all this
country-side. Ere they left the Castle the funeral prayer was offered
up by Mr. Cardross, the last time the good old minister's voice was ever
heard publicly in his own parish, and at the head of the coffin walked,
as chief mourner, Cardross Bruce-Montgomerie, the earl's adopted son.

And so, laid beside his father and mother, they left him to his rest.

According to his own wish, his grave bears this inscription, carved upon
a plain upright stone, which--also by his particular request--
stands facing the Manse windows:


Charles Edward Stuart Montgomerie,

THE LAST EARL OF CAIRNFORTH,

Died----

Aged 43 Years.


"Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.